Thursday, November 15, 2007

Book Rental Sites--veinglory


Cheryl brought a new online service to my attention. Two new companies, Booksfree and Bookswim, are most easily described as "Netflix for books". You pay $9.99 or %14.99 per month on the basic plan. The send two books at a time and postage is free.

Authors seem divided on this idea. Many, predictably, focus on how they aren't getting paid--or more accurately they are only paid for however many copies the company buys.

The other group are more like me. It's legal and it might be good promotion. I mean if more people see the book, more people become potential future customers. If one of them chooses to 'keep' the book then the company will buy another copy.

If you decide to join a book rental service I would suggest going with Booksfree because they are cheaper, you can search by publisher and they have a good selection of self-published titles. A quick search of the numbers of books they have from each publisher is an interesting indication of the ranking of self-publishers in their eyes.

7099 Lightning Source
3511 iUniverse
318 Lulu
200 xlibris
125 booklocker
23 Aventine
2 diggory
0 Publish America

No comments: